Arizona best team money can buy

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

If the New York Yankees are history's team and the Atlanta Braves, through the reach of TBS, are America's Team, then the Arizona Diamondbacks are the American Consumer's Team.

For everybody who has ever maxed out a credit card, this team is for you. For anybody who has had to dash to the bank to cover a check or fibbed that "the check is in the mail," this is your team. Revel in their financial daring and celebrate their championship — before the bills catch up with them.

You don't need to know Byung-Hyun Kim from Kim Dae Jung to be able to relate to the Diamondbacks. That's because the Diamondbacks have gotten to where they are today, the first team to win the World Series in only its fourth year of existence, the old-fashioned way — by going into hock. Lock, stock and jock.

Their method of operation is one most of us can identify with: Spend now, worry about it when the bills show up.

When they do arrive, it ought to add up to a whopper with the Diamondbacks reportedly on the hook for nearly $200 million in guaranteed contracts and deferments through 2006.

In this, the era of wholesale free agent migration, a lot of teams try to "buy" a championship. But only the Diamondbacks do it without overdraft protection.

It is one thing for Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner to write checks for high-priced free agent acquisitions. But what's the fun in that when, thanks to the rich television and cable rights deals, he knows he can cover them.

The Diamondbacks are different. They have lived on the edge. They have had to be creative if not exactly fiscally sound. Operating motto: Play now, pay later.

After his hui's beginning $350 million investment, Diamondbacks' chairman Jerry Colangelo has had to go back and pass the hat among his partners each of the past three years to the tune of $60 million. Just last year, after taking another plunge into the free agent market, he had to get the commissioner's office to guarantee a bank's $20 million loan.

Then, to get what would have been an $81 million payroll down to $53 million without trading talent, Colangelo convinced 10 players to defer $20 million in salaries on top of $37 million already postponed.

Some Major League clubs are run like Fortune 500 companies. And, some are run on a shoestring like the team soon to be the former Montreal Expos.

Then, there are the Diamondbacks, the team that has managed to be one step ahead of both the Yankees and the bill collectors.